Hasbro has shown samples of the 2005 line to retail buyers. (those are the folks that purchase the items their store will offer to sell, which is usually a corperate-wide position.)

Among the items shown were the Cybertron toys we've already seen via Galaxy Force. There will be more "Primes" later on down the line, besides the fire truck, female race car & dragon that we have already seen. Later toys were shown by illustration, as no prototypes were available yet. Among them: a deluxe scale cheetah.

And they were shown plans for Alternators 2005. Among them: "Suzuka Blue Metallic" repaint of Windcharger. No word on the identity and a deep red pick-up truck. No word on the make or model of the truck. And plans are being made to expand the line to the $30 price point with 1/72 scale aircraft. Average wingspan/rotor 8-10 inches.

No Universe toys were shown, and the only all-plastic redecos were as part of the Cybertron line as case filler and in the form of two store exclusives. (They did not show other store's exclusives to this buyer, obviously, so they may be more than this from other retailers.)

Hasbro will offer comic book pack-in sets a`la their recent GI Joe 3-packs. All four two-packs shown will feature a full sized comic book from Dreamwave. They will be from various series, including one that has never aired in the USA. No price yet, but the toys shown were basic & deluxe scale.

1:72? Wow. So they would be three times the size of the regular BT chars, which means they would be even larger than MP Convoy or possibly Fortress/Brave Maximus. That would be an impressive sight to see, but unrealistic considering the packaging would have to be mammoth-sized just to fit them and the cost would be outrageous.

Ya, I thought they had to do something like that, the scale would have t obe different. However this raises an old question that has been around. Combiners. The reason they couldn't do it was because the middle one would be to huge and wouldn't stay in with the 1:24, well they could make (rough guess) 1:32/36 ones.

Wouldn't deluxe-size be standard scale for Cheetors? All the BW Cheetors were deluxes as was Night Slash Cheetor. That's four Deluxe Cheetors versus one Mega and one Supreme.

Interesting tidbit, though. Could this mean that, in Cybertron, Unicron's four Horsemen (the four deluze-sized Transmetal repaints in Armada) will still play a part, though in new bodies?

Quoth Arcee:And plans are being made to expand the line to the $30 price point with 1/72 scale aircraft. Average wingspan/rotor 8-10 inches.

What can I say, but - my wallet is going to hate me even more.

At 1/24 scale, an F-15 jet-type Starscream would be about 21 inches high in robot mode. Not as high as Fortress Meximus, but close. At 1/72 scale, Starscream would be about the same height as the Alternators cars.
That seems small to me at first, but one should remember that the Alternators are being made to common model scales. Another common aircraft scale, 1/32, would yield a Starscream about 14 inches high, making him not just unwieldy for packaging, but he would tower inappropriately over Masterpiece Prime.
At 1/48 scale, our hypothetical Starscream would be a reasonable 10 inches high, in proper proportion in robot mode to both Prime and the Alternators. However, this size would probably be too expensive for Hasbro/Takara to produce and package.

Oooh, good news indeed! Come to think of it, wasn't there a thread in Toy Discussions where people were saying they didn't think Alternators would expand the line? :rolleyes: Let's hope they're proved wrong. If they are, then I'm gonna end up a whole lot poorer... but hey, who cares about that.

I am hoping for Thundercracker to come out first. There are enough black decepticons for now [dead end AND jaguar], but no blue ones.

Even though I stopped buying bt autobots [too much money required, heh. Let's stick to their cooler remoulds], I'll definitely get Ironhide. He and Tracks were the two toys I dreamed of getting when I was younger [only got Ironhide, BT Tracks filled the empty space]

Let's not talk about remoulds of the red truck, we haven't even seen the original plans.